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I built a set of these for my uncle, who is primarily a 20mm historical wargamer. They are 100% scratchbuilt, foamcore construction with balsa timbering and card roofs. I experimented with some textured plasticard on one, but the carving into the foamcore with nothing but a sharp pen worked best.
the entire album (with WIPs) are here in my photobucket for them
http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/dsteingass/1%2072%20Scratchbuilt%20Buildings/




it's no diorama, just the grass side of my gaming table with some trees and shrubbery thrown into the pic

oh, and this one sparked the 20mm Stalingrad project

i wnet to your photobucket account on my own, before you posted this...i was amazed!!! and i think i will try some of the techniques you showed for some of my own needs...currently something like a hollywood westen city with only fronts to the houses springs to my mind^^ i really like that style of your building! but don´t get me wrong, the historical middleage houses look way more spectacular then the bombed stalingrad...^^

Wow, those olde-worlde buildings are fantastic dsteingass, very nice

honestly they do look like made form a kit but go and see for yourself everything is scratchbuilt!!!

Thanks everyone! The Stalingrad ruins were meant to be gaming-friendly first, the European buildings really amount to LOS blockers. I actually want to build a Wild-West set like this, but that is a huge time and effort drain, still maybe someday.
this is the prototype, this time though they are more gaming-useful.



It is foamcore but mostly made of these pine craft sticks I found at Michael's craft store, they are like big stir sticks, and stained using an alcohol-based wood stain-pen. I printed the wallpaper from a pic of a repeating pattern resized to scale on a color laser printer, I like the effect meself.

Sorry Vik, didnt mean to hijack your thread bro I'll shut up

well i get it back from time to time^^ so all is just and nice^^ and as for nice things... wel i have a soft spot right there^^

Ah, don't worry about that, vik's threads are made for thread-jacking

lol.... as long as i have the last word everyone has the oportunity to have his/her say^^

Hey vik , Glad your making progress, I was thinking about your basing issues, what about going muddy but adding a few loose cobbles and static grass shoots , best of both .

here are some nice pics of arches , i downloaded for research

http://www.llgc.org.uk/ardd/pensaeri/arch010.htm

@dsteingass , great work on those houses, they remind me of a an old white dwarf that had templates for those .. i used it in my gcse art exam at school... only got a c though :-( bloody philistines !

I edited that above post..heh sorry...

anyways, all the 20mm scale buildings are made from the same standard storey/window/door height template I made in Visio, printed, cut, and pinned them to the foamcore and cut, so all the doors and windows are a standard, uniform height, remember, maximizing gaming usefulness often forces you to trade off some realism.

If anyone wants the file, I'll gladly share...but it is for 15-20mm scale


Automatically Appended Next Post:

neil101 wrote:
@dsteingass , great work on those houses, they remind me of a an old white dwarf that had templates for those .. i used it in my gcse art exam at school... only got a c though :-( bloody philistines !

That is the article that this idea spawned from!! GMTA

neil, the lower section of the spoilered pic is exactly what i had in mind...the sandy colored brickwork you get in certain areas! thanks mate, and in your link there are a bunch of really lovley arches and the site is really inspiring!

i first thought when seeing those updated pics of the western saloon that the wallpaper is so lovley! i think you have a great knack for building buildings (that sounds weird written by me, if not dull^^)
is the front of said saloon also only carved foam? it look like the real deal, sometimes it is unbelievable what one can achieve with material like foam and "stirring sticks"!

and you can´t shut up just now... i think you should make a seperate blog for those buildings... scenes like that celebrating guy coming from the throne is just priceless!

cheers, vik

heh thanks, the wood siding is actually a sheet of balsa wood that had been milled with a clapboard siding pattern, got it at my FLHS Phil's Hobby Shop - this is HO scale

so just asking is H0 more true to 20mm or would it work for 28mm heroic too? i always wondered...

milled with a clapboard siding pattern

???
sometimes technical terms are hard to understand to me... some of the other guys here have had a hard time from time to time to explain cartain things to me^^


feel sleepy now, see yàll tomorrow!

cheers, vik

lol..It is a sheet of wood that has had a texture cut into it lengthwise, like wooden siding on a house.
like this http://www.misterart.com/crafts/model-making/balsa-and-basswood/midwest-basswood-clapboard-siding.html

20mm is smaller, uses 1/72 scale figures (usually softer plastic) and vehicles, HO scale (1/87) is useable, 28mm or Heroic like 40k needs a bigger footprint. We play a set of rules known as "Flying Lead" http://www.ganeshagames.net/modern/ It's great fun!

Seconded Vik! we need a Dstein buildinglog
Really liking those buildings!

Going to have to do some for Freebooters Fate but hopefully wil be compatible for Fear and Faith/SoBH

Not got FL but the rulesets have a super cash to fun ratio imho

:facepalm... used the translation site i use and translated backwards "fräsen" as you showed the link and felt a bit dumb as it is exactly milling^^ so i understand you now^^

yeah hands up how wants a WIP blog of Dstein for awsome scratchbuilding buildings (oh i went there again^^)

well as rules always goes i am too lazy to actually try to tackle them... currently i dwindle around with painting and building and contemplate the thought to one day have a full army and then i will give the rules a go...till then i stick to making whatever springs of my mind like a cheaper version of zeus waiting to see a pegasus^^

Viktor von Domm wrote:
well as rules always goes i am too lazy to actually try to tackle them... currently i dwindle around with painting and building and contemplate the thought to one day have a full army and then i will give the rules a go...till then i stick to making whatever springs of my mind like a cheaper version of zeus waiting to see a pegasus^^

Vik, that is exactly what I have been doing for the past ten years, piddling around with this and that, I hadnt even played 40k until about a year ago, the modeling and painting is what attracts me to the hobby most.

As for a blog, ok I can do that. Would it be best to have a seperate thread? or combine it all into one mishmashed thread?

i would suggest opening a new one and you can never know how long they stay alive anyways...so opening is dead cheap and i would do that... for my own needs i opened several ones and mostly now i have one working but i will switch when necessary... so i guess it is over to you^^ but one thing more threads mean more work but also spreads out for new comers your bloody good work...so i guess it is mostly win^^ and i think your work is pretty much off the scale so you could get the apropriated followers^^... me for instance^^

oh and lol... yep that sounds too pretty much like me when you describe it like that...tho i hope that in that timeset i will get my sons to play some games with me... both are still not reading so rules and such games are a tad too early but they are very much ithcing for their own armies already^^ and i would be damned to sooth them in their interrest^^

Thanks Vik, it is up @ http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/398620.page

yup^^ am a regualr follower from now on^^... it is in fact quite addictive...

More ideas for scratch built terrain, just a few minor tweeks to make it fit for 40k scale

definatly... my hands get rather itchy to try some of that stuff ....

haha, precisely! Stocking up on basic supplies is the key thing, and the basic supplies are rather cheap really. Then your imagination and commitment to time are your only limiters.

Then your imagination and commitment to time are your only limiters

yup those can´t be purchased in a hurry^^

Vik has shown us that his imagination is working well.

*bows humbly* and leaves the scene for tonight...^^

And he is humble too!

so mates been promising to show you some WIP pics of the dio... well here it is, about four layers of cheapo black paint and then respectivly layers of brownish/sandy paint over that... and made an attempt that still needs to touched up of a skyline and also the floor got painted and gluepainted and then sanded and then painted again and again^^ and then washed with one heck of a dirty soup i made from the cheapo wallpaints... well...




on a toltally unrelated note... my wife today got me a walker from playmobil...new range of galxy freedom fighters and that mech i instantly said i had to have... well i fully well knew then that i wouldn´t buy me one and she said well thats for your birthday then... but as we had a bit of rumble at home lat days she bought me one of these as a make amends present kind of...^^

sorry for toppled pics... i think they will be erased shortly... was too dumb to turn them before upload...





well thats all folks^^

tomorrow i hope to get a wash of that cheapo wash over the brickwork to make the recesses stand out a bit more and if the lords of time allow i can drybrush over the bricks yet again to make the stone effect done...what do you think about adding later on some grassy basing material as a stand in for poison ivy or other plants like that???

cheers, vik

Noice job Vik! I love the color! My Girlfriend and I buy each other Lego (her birthday is tomorrow and her Diagon Alley just arrived) so, she's a keeper too!

lol... yeah lego is one of my first loves too^^ in my youth i liked to combine lego and playmobil together...that set if of the harry potter stick isn´t it? is it available in stores at all? or ebayed? quite expensive^^ and boy thats the second time you talked about here being a keeper^^ lol...